Link: Journalism students in Denver must write for Wikipedia to prepare for the (unpaid) future

“Denver journalism students are writing Wikipedia entries as part of a curriculum that stresses online writing and content creation as readers move to the web en masse.”

“‘I see journalism as being completely online within the next two to five years,’ said a journalism instructor at the University of Denver. ‘If you’re not trained to expect that and write for that, then you’re not going to be ready for the work world.'”

Hm. Training for the next “work world” involves producing content for a site that runs on volunteer labor.

I expect journalism as a career path to more and more go the way of the fine arts. It will, like painting or creative writing, become much more a mostly unpaid pursuit of passion that occasionally blooms into something financially rewarding if your piece of work happens to raise enough interest (and you’re able to work incredibly hard and long without a promise of any monetary payment). It will go from holding down a position as a human factory of regular content to a floating freelance dance responding to requests or praying for a hit. From marketing to connecting. From telling to conversing. From self-expression to self-positioning. From performing to channeling. From exploiting to evolving. From audience to collaborator.